[open] show and tell

[Cassiell]

Winter was just on the horizon -- he could feel it in his bones. That alluring chill, gnawing at his extremities as he soared overhead on outstretched ebony wings. Still, his muscles ached from the exertion of flying into Beqanna just the night before. But it was a wonderful sort of ache. The type of pain that drives one to push themselves harder, farther.

There was still much work to be done.

So it was that the brute found himself circling through the drab, grey-drenched skies with the weak light of a late autumn afternoon reflecting off of his midnight pelt, illuminating the many scars crisscrossing his form. Like a vulture, he circled, hunting for another, for any signs of life. He had questions. He wanted answers.

Like a lazy serpent growing sluggish in the cold, the river churned far beneath him as it wove in between the trees and fields, beckoning him in closer with its silvered sheen. Ears flicking backward and nostrils flaring as he scented at the air, the stallion finally began his long descent -- a precarious dive which saw the tangled tendrils of his mane and tail whipping behind him like a warlord's banner until finally he touched down in the midst of a sparse thicket with the crackle of dry leaves underhoof marking his landing.

Gazing out from between the trunks of those trees, golden eyes aflame with purpose, the stud surveyed the riverbank before him with all the cool calculation of a seasoned hunter. And so he waited -- merely watching and listening as he spied for any signs of a worthy "prey."

cassiel

temperance is a virtue

Dark Pegasus by Tatiana Yamshanova used with permission.